The Alternatives by Caoilin Hughes:

Once upon a time, there were three Irish sisters: Olwen ( a geology lecturer) Rhonda (a political fixer) Maeve (a chef, last book on ‘post Brexit cookery’) and Nell (pansexual free spirit/philosophy lecturer).  A family tragedy tore them apart and now another brings them together. 

It’s a delicious mix for Hughes’s third novel.  Where the casual reader may have trouble is in it’s shifts in style - from broadly comic, to social parody, to an America on the verge of a second bout of Trumpian madness and a thought-experiment on how a united Ireland might actually work.  All that cosmic, comic fuel is expended in the last third of the book (which is largely playscript).  

So that sleight of hand may leave you short-changed - it’s a quietly comic, structurally daring book which knows it’s audience, but it is as not as thoughtful or uproarious as some recent Irish books.  It’s published by Oneworld on 2nd May and I thank them for a preview copy.